Two Social Media Mistakes Small Businesses Make

When you run a small business these days, it can seem like everyone else was invited to a party but you were passed over. Everyone talks about their social media strategy, and when you go on web sites like Twitter or Facebook, your competitors all appear to be effortlessly building communities, followers, and reputations with Tweets and Posts that are interesting, entertaining, and friendly. You can’t stop yourself from enjoying them, actually – even though they’re your competition. The whole experience inspires you to redouble your social media campaigning and get a slice of the pie – after all, if they can do it, so can you!And so begins a dark journey that leaves you, a few months later, exhausted, stressed, and still with very little to show for your social media efforts. How can social media be so hard when others make it look so easy? You read tons of blog posts about strategies and you tried every trick in the book to boost your traffic. Yet your Followers are anaemic and your Friends List is a ghost town. What went wrong? Here are two common mistakes small businesses make that actually harm their social media efforts.

Scheduling

At some point, you’ve been directed to a scheduling site like Buffer. You’ve been told you can compose your Tweets and Posts at your leisure, whenever you have spare time, and then schedule them carefully to keep your posts fresh and inspire people to Follow and Friend you – because no one Follows or Friends accounts that only update once in a blue moon. The latter is true – but scheduling can be the Kiss of Death.

The main problem with scheduling is that you can’t predict what’s going to be happening in the world and what people will be talking about. If there’s a major political event and everyone is having a heartfelt discussion about the issues on Twitter, and suddenly you blast out a joke link you scheduled four days ago, no one knows it was scheduled – they just think you’re tone deaf and possibly evil.

Another problem with scheduling is the fact that you’re not there to react. Let’s say your joke link goes out at a different time and it’s not seen as wildly inappropriate. But one long-time customer of yours is offended for some reason, and responds – politely enough – to your Tweet. But you’re not there at the keyboard; you scheduled that Tweet and you’re not going to look at your Twitter account until the next time you sit down to schedule more. By then, it’s too late – your long term customers thinks you just ignored them … and they’re not your customer any more.

Outsourcing

It seems smart. You’re busy, and writing blog posts and Tweets is difficult and time-consuming. There are people in the world who do that sort of thing professionally – why not hire them? They create content for you, post it under your name or your company name, and you get an active social media presence without any effort.

Now, there is nothing wrong with hiring people to write your posts for you. Keeping up a robust blogging and Tweeting schedule while you also run a business and enjoy life isn’t easy, and if you can afford it, why not? But you have to keep an eye on things. You have to ensure that the tone and style of what’s being posted in your name matches up with your own. You can’t just review some samples and then give the service a rubber stamp to post whatever they come up with. This is the perception, culture, and reputation of your business we’re talking about. All it takes is one ill-conceived post to ruin your online rep – and no one will want to hear that it was the ghost writer’s fault.

In short, it’s okay if you need to outsource some or all of the posts to social media for your business. But don’t abdicate responsibility. Review them all at least in a cursory fashion to make sure it’s the sort of message you want to send, rewrite or reject as necessary – and maintain control over how you’re interacting with your customers and potential customers.

The world never gets simpler – it always gets more and more complicated. Marketing seems like it was simpler back in the days when all it took was a coupon in the paper and a jingle on the radio. Now you’re expected to interact with your customers and build communities. No wonder other folks keep coming up with ways to charge you to give you some of your time back by taking on the social media burden. Tools are useful – but use them wisely. It’s too late once you’ve destroyed your Following, so stay involved at all times!

What other social media small businesses mistakes have you seen?

Comments are accepted below. Go ahead, lay it on me.

5 / 5 stars